It can be noted that in terms of content, the third type of interpretation is very close to the first.

St. John Cassian of Rome illustrates the above types of interpretation as follows: "One and the same Jerusalem can be understood in a fourfold sense: – in the historical sense, it is the city of the Jews; in the allegorical – there is the church of Christ; in the anagogical, there is the city of the heavenly God, who is the mother of us all; in the tropological sense, there is the soul of man, which is often condemned or praised by the Lord under this name. Of these four kinds of interpretation, the Apostle says: "Now, if I come to you, brethren, and speak with unknown tongues, what shall I profit you, if I do not make myself known to you, either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophecy, or by teaching?" (1 Corinthians 14:6). Revelation belongs to the allegory by which what is contained in the historical narrative is explained in a spiritual sense... And knowledge, which is also mentioned by the Apostle, is a tropology, according to which everything that pertains to active prudence, what is useful or honest, we distinguish by prudent investigation... Also, prophecy, which the Apostle placed in the third place, means anagogy, which refers to the invisible and the future... And teaching means a simple order of presentation of history, which does not contain any more intimate meaning, except for that which is meant by words" [31, p. 425].

The first type of interpretation can also include typological interpretation [53; 64, p. 52], which reveals the types contained in the Old Testament history. In this interpretation, individual Old Testament persons or events are interpreted as prototypes of persons or events in New Testament history. A classic example is the prophet Jonah, who foreshadowed the burial of the Savior (Matt. 12:40), the construction of a brazen serpent by the prophet Moses (John 3:14), the story of the patriarch Joseph, in which we see a prophecy about the circumstances of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Typology is widely used both in the works of the Holy Fathers and in liturgical texts.

The Concept of Old Testament Biblical Criticism. At present, many students of the Holy Scriptures ignore the allegorical interpretation in the broad sense, and in its place they put the so-called biblical criticism. Biblical criticism is understood as an approach to the Holy Scriptures in which the same scientific means and methods (historical, archaeological, linguistic, etc.) are applied to its study as are used in relation to any other historical document and literary text, in order to clarify its origin, the original intention of the author, as well as its true meaning.

Unfortunately, this approach is becoming more and more widespread among Orthodox biblical scholars. Some of them directly assert that in our time there can be no other exegesis than biblical-critical: not a single modern educated person will interpret the Holy Scriptures in the way that St. Basil the Great did.

The origin of biblical criticism should be attributed to the sixteenth century. At its origins were European humanists: Lorenzo Valla, Johann Reuchlin, who, as we know, often gravitated towards ancient culture. It is known that one of the incentives for the study of the ancient Hebrew language was the desire to get acquainted with Kabbalah. The Hebrew language and the method of commentary were learned from the rabbis. Gradually, biblical criticism gained recognition first among the Protestants (and this is natural, since, having rejected the remnants of church tradition, they had to create their own), and then among the Catholics [see 91, Book 1, pp. 10-17]. At the end of the 19th century, supporters of this approach to the study of the Holy Scriptures also appeared among the Orthodox. However, a poisoned stream flows from the poisoned source. The fact is that "people approach Scripture not from the Church, not from faith and spirit, but from outside, from a purely personal intellectual sphere, with the usual critical methods of external science, which have at the basis of all their research the method of distrust and doubt. This is the fundamental lie. The Scriptures are given only to the faith and love of the Church, and only in her and by her faithful sons can they be interpreted" [50, p. 63].

The described methods undoubtedly bear the imprint of the worldview of their creators. We will soon be convinced of this. Without going into details, I will try to give a general idea of biblical criticism, drawn from Orthodox authors.

One of the resolute supporters of the "modern" approaches was Professor A. V. Kartashev. Therefore, excerpts from his speech on Old Testament biblical criticism will be given here. He tries to give it a dogmatic foundation: "That is why the patristic thought [here there is a reference to the Interpretation of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, St. Basil the Great, which on the whole contains the ideas directly opposite to those expressed by Kartashev] affirmed the thesis of the fullness of the action of the natural human psyche and its reflection in the writings of the sacred authors themselves, to the extent that those methodological operations on the text and content of the Bible that are required by scientific knowledge are dogmatically justified and legitimized. Critical work is appropriate here because it is applied to the human element subject to its competence: it is fully given here. Given, for the Bible is not only the word of God, but also the word of man in their harmonious combination, more precisely: the word of the divine-man. Our usual expression "the word of God" is dogmatically indisputable, but incomplete, just as the expression "Jesus Christ is God" is true, but incomplete; more precisely: the God-man. Therefore, the formula "God is the author of the sacred books" should sound like a Monophysite deviation away from the real Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. The same deviation would be to exclusively hold on to the expression "the word of God." With the slogan "the word of the divine-man" we establish ourselves on the unshakable rock of the Chalcedonian dogma. It is a miraculous key that opens the way to the most central salvific mysteries of our faith, and at the same time it is a blessing for the sinless construction of critical biblical knowledge in Orthodoxy. Of course, we do not reason here by identity, but only by analogy with the Christological dogma, for here there is no incarnation, only the coexistence of the human principle with the divine. Here, without heresy, the formulas of Antiochian theology are appropriate: the dwelling of the Spirit of God in the human shell of the Biblical word, as in a temple, without an unmerged and indivisible hypostasis" [37, pp. 72-73].

Up to this point, it would seem difficult to disagree. But it turns out that the results of rejecting the application, even if conditional, of this dogma are still quite heretical. It is stated that in order to understand the Word of God, it is necessary to carefully study its "human shell", but when studying the latter, the former is completely forgotten. And there is a complete separation of the word of man from the Word of God. By the way, it can be noted that in his book "Ecumenical Councils" Kartashev in every possible way defends Nestorius, so that he becomes not a heretic, but simply a victim of misunderstanding on the part of St. Cyril and other defenders of Orthodoxy.

1]. Do any of you see any logical defect here? If we attribute the authorship of the Bible to God, if we say that the Holy Spirit spoke to the prophets, then to say that the author of this Scripture is no longer available to us is to declare that we have nothing to do with the Church. In the mouth of some Protestant, this sounds natural, but not from the lips of a professor of an Orthodox seminary.

This or that passage of Holy Scripture is now considered fully interpreted and explained if somewhere in the depths of history some historical person was found to whom it was profitable to write it. For example, we found Psalm 50, it turned out that it could have been edited during the Babylonian captivity by a person who really wanted Jerusalem to be rebuilt as soon as possible – that's it, that's it, the explanation is finished. The story of the patriarch Judah is added to the Book of Genesis at the request of David to increase the prestige of the dynasty. The Book of Daniel was written in the second century B.C. to strengthen the Jews to fight the Syrians. And so on.

Is this what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17)?

But that's not all. It turns out that the prophets did not know the future. They only guessed about the coming events. Therefore, if something is predicted accurately, for example, a name, then this is not a prediction, but a late, contemporary insertion of the editor. And if it was a prediction, then the prophet, of course, did not understand its meaning. For example, in the same Kartashev: "Did Isaiah, glorifying the sufferer for Israel close to him, know that his writing reed, depicting the prototype, was already drawing pictures of Golgotha, chasing ready-made sayings for future evangelists; just as the Psalmist, the author of Psalm 21 (note that he does not say David), did he know that his literary image, "Thou hast divided My garments unto Thyself, and cast lots for My garments" (Psalm 21:19) – is already a prototype of the events of Golgotha – only this has been revealed to us and struck us once and for all by its coincidence. Of course, the real historical Isaiah, when, as we read in the 7th chapter of this book, he pointed to the impending birth of a son named Immanuel by a young woman as a sign of Yahweh's mercy, did not think that this birth and this symbolic name, although the prophet's heart was beating with messianic premonitions, that this whole little political incident would later go far beyond the boundaries of this backwater provincial history, and that all this was a type of the Annunciation and the Nativity Christ's events are more than universal" [37, pp. 33-34]. These statements are on the verge of blasphemy. And, of course, they are in glaring contradiction with what the Holy Fathers said about the prophets and prophecies. Although both Kartashev and others are constantly trying to refer to the Holy Fathers.

But not all passages in the Old Testament lend themselves to easy interpretation. After all, something is explained in the apostolic writings. What should I do? But here the critics have a wonderful way out, it is formulated as follows: "We have to distinguish between the Evangelists and the Apostles – this is already said about the New Testament – as divinely inspired broadcasters revealed by Christ and entrusted by the Holy Spirit to the preservation of the entire Church of absolute truths, and the same Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and others as pupils of the limited and defective school rabbinic environment" [37, pp. 82-83]. That is, when we like something, we say it's an inspired author, and when we don't like it, we say it's a defective rabbinic school environment. Very convenient, very. It is not entirely clear, however, what to do with the words of Christ Himself about the Old Testament and the prophets preserved in the Gospels. But there is probably some trick to this, although usually they are simply ignored.